Monday, Monday

October?!?!  How'd that happen?  Mom and I were talking the other day (on that dreaded contraption that most people seem to fawn over with orgasmic delight, the phone).  She answers the phone with a business like "this is (her first name)".  It can be a bit disconcerting if I'm not expecting it.  Cuz I feel like, oohps, don't bother mom while she's at work.  Never mind the fact that it is 9:30 pm.

It reminded me of my teenage years and how most people thought I was her on the phone.  She worked in a sewing factory and most of the women who worked there lost a substantial amount of their hearing, cuz ya know, those industrial sewing machines are loud (esp when ya get 50 or so clipping along at a rapid rate).  Mom's deaf in one ear (we call it her 'bad ear', like it's scolded and sitting in a corner for time-out).  That combined with the tendency of most people who have become hard of hearing gradually to shout, not realizing that they themselves are jacking up the volume cuz they can't hear themselves or anyone else; would result in some startling phone transactions.

Now mom would get up around 5:30a and be to work by 6 most mornings.  This meant that if anyone needed to call her at home for some ungodly reason, they would do so by 5:45 (in the friggen morning).  Most times, I would hear the phone and let her answer it.  But sometimes, I'd be yanked awake in panic and scramble for the receiver and hear a very loud screech of her name (again, most people thought that I was she).  By then I'd have the phone pressed to my ear and that blast to the eardrum worked better than any alarm clock.  Hell, it was more startling than the noon whistle at the ball-bearing plant over the railroad tracks.

All that to say that one early Monday morning, before the proverbial cock crowed, the phone's insistent ring broke thru my conscious and I answered it with a pounding heart and much disorientation.  "HI THERE ARE YOU COMING TO WORK EARLY THIS MORNING?!?"  I raised my voice (cuz that's what most folks do when someone yells at you) and screeched back, "DO YOU NEED ME TO?"

Them:  YES AND BRING COFFEE AND AN EXTRA PAIR OF SNIPPERS.

me:  OKAY THEN, GIVE ME TEN MINUTES.

So I jump thru my ass, and grab some coffee and an extra pair of scissors and hot-foot it to my summer job as a butcher's assistant; only to realize after I get there and my boss (the butcher) is thankfully slurping the coffee I brought, that the call was meant for mom.  And I had the day off.  And bringing scissors to the meat-market is a sign that you're nuts.

My boss already knew that.